


Distance

by burrsir



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Post-Break Up, more like a hopeful ending?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 09:58:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11056584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burrsir/pseuds/burrsir
Summary: It's been five years since Annabeth and Piper broke up, but there are times when Annabeth can't stop thinking about her and wondering why she ever let the best thing in her life go so easily.





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @lgbtqpjo's pipabeth ship week on tumblr
> 
> Not beta read, all mistakes are mine

Annabeth had been having one of those mornings. The ones where no matter how wide open the curtains are, no matter how bright the day and no matter how strong the coffee, the heavy weight in her chest persisted. Her hair was loose and tangled, as she’d forgotten to braid it back last night to prevent it from knotting. She hadn’t bothered to get dressed, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem on one of her rare days off, but she was wearing that one pair of pyjama pants that were just too long and got caught under her heels and make walking generally uncomfortable. She’d normally change out of them as soon as she could, but today she couldn’t muster up the effort.

She sat at the table just off the side of the kitchen, which was technically designated as a “dining room,” but she hardly ever bothered to eat there, preferring to curl up with her food on the couch. The table itself was something relatively cheap she’d bought to fill the space, with thin metal legs and a top too thin for her to trust putting anything more than a vase of flowers and her laptop on it. The glass of the tabletop was cold against the sides of her hands that rested there, a sharp contrast to the heat of her palms wrapped around her coffee cup. The conflicting sensations sent goosebumps up her arms and made the hairs stand, but she didn’t bother adjusting. At least it gave her something to focus on.

Well, something _else_ to focus on.

While her eyelids were still heavy and her chest still felt like it had the weight of the sky pressing it down (something she had far too much personal experience with), despite having already had over half her cup of coffee, she took another sip. Letting the smell of French vanilla creamer and undertones of bitter coffee beans envelope her for a moment, she tried to will herself into having some focus, some drive, anything to pull herself out of the slump she knew she was falling into. Annabeth knew she’d never been good at that herself.

_But she always used to. She’d always been there to pull you out of it and drag you into the light of day, to make you smile when it felt like too much of an effort to do yourself, to offer a warmth that lasted longer than a cup of coffee._

With that one thought she’d let slip by, Annabeth knew she had lost for the day.

Brushing her now empty coffee cup to the side, she pulled her hair back from around her face and held it at the back of her neck. She’d been getting better at this, she’d thought. She hadn’t let herself think about Piper in so long, she was beginning to think that she’d finally moved on.

It had been five years already since their official breakup, and even longer still since things had started to crumble. But in that time, Annabeth had made a life for herself. She had a successful architecture career, an apartment all her own, a car, a bulging list of friends - both old and new - a room at the Big House reserved just for her when she visits Camp Half-Blood in the summers, and even a statue of her on Mount Olympus to honor her work in rebuilding after the Titan War. her life had become everything she could have ever hoped it would be, so why was she still so fixated on this?

Annabeth had worked hard for years to rid herself of the mentality that mistakes, big or small, were a reflection of who she was as a person. Mistakes happened, and the only thing that could be done was to keep charging forward and patch up the mistake as best as you could. Her hubris still liked to whisper nasty things in her ear when they happened, but she no longer weighed her worth against her failures. But that didn’t matter, because this thing with Piper - this feeling, this longing, this ache of missing her like icy claws dug into her chest - this wasn’t a mistake. She refused to call anything relating to Piper a _mistake,_ even if things had gone wrong and she still couldn’t find a way to build herself up and out of it.

So then what was it?

Five years. Five years and she still couldn’t forget about the way Piper seemed to come alive in the sunlight, about how she’d stand on her tiptoes with her arms out and her face to the sun, drinking it in like it was the first time she’d ever seen it. She couldn’t forget the way Piper took on every task with a passion and determination that rivaled her own, and the rebellious streak in her that said she would _win_ and if the odds said she couldn’t win she would find a way. She couldn’t forget the way Piper would always know when she was getting too frustrated or overworked on a project and drag her away despite Annabeth’s protests, because she knew Annabeth would work herself to death if nobody physically stopped her. She couldn’t forget about the way Piper would fidget with the braids in her hair when she got anxious, or that she snorted when she laughed, or that she could down an entire can of whipped cream in one sitting if Annabeth didn’t stop her. She couldn’t forget the way Piper would hold her in her arms and recite all the old Cherokee stories her Dad used to tell her so that she wouldn’t forget them. She couldn’t forget the way Piper felt tucked under her chin when they slept, or the way she’d make pancakes with different fruits in them for every day of the week, the way her eyes always seemed to change color, except they didn’t, and it always baffled Annabeth.

She couldn’t forget the way Piper’s lips felt pressed against hers, just a little chapped, but warm and radiating every emotion Piper would be feeling in that moment. Then Piper would slide her fingers into Annabeth’s hair and press herself even closer, until Annabeth could let everything else fall away until it was just _Piper_ and _Piper and Annabeth_ and _Annabeth and Piper_.

But five years and some time ago - she couldn’t quite put a timestamp on it - those things had started to fizzle out.

No, “fizzle,” wasn’t the right word, at least not for Annabeth. Annabeth had never stopped loving Piper, only come face to face with the inevitable and accepted it. Time and distance were funny things, and she would’ve thought she’d have a better handle on them after quite literally defeating the Lord of Time and Goddess of the Earth. School had been a priority, and at some point New Rome had to reach its limits and she had had to pursue degrees with mortal schools if she was to ever work outside of demigod-specific places. Transferring schools meant moving, which included moving away from Piper. Long-distance relationships weren’t inherently bad, and Annabeth still thought it could’ve worked, if there hadn’t been other factors at play.

Distance was manageable. Iris messages and Valdez Approved demigod cellphones and wifi routers opened up other ways to keep in touch too. Timezones were a hassle, but not enough to push them to the breaking point. No, what had brought that on was distance, coupled with long hours studying and too many hours working, and the stress and demands of college and burgeoning adulthood whittling away at Annabeth’s nerves to the point where she was irritable and snappy to anyone she didn’t have to put on a professionally cheery face for. They had never actually fought, and as much as Annabeth wanted to blame herself for driving Piper away, she knew it wasn’t entirely true. She knew that they had simply fallen out of touch, but by the time they could see each other again and try to go back to the way things were, the distance between them had grown too far and too cold.

It had been a clean, amicable break, like snapping a chocolate bar in half. An acknowledgement that things were different now, and time apart had fizzled away what they had had.

(It was a lie, at least on Annabeth’s part, but she couldn’t find anything to argue otherwise.)

Sometimes Annabeth wondered why she didn’t fight harder, why she let the best thing in her life go without even trying to dig further and see if Piper’s feelings toward breaking up had been as fake as her own. If Piper really hadn’t wanted to break up with her, if Piper had done all that and put on a front because she had believed that it was what Annabeth had wanted… there had to be a chance, didn’t there?

The ache in her chest had turned into an anxious, swirling feeling. An itch, an urge, something inside her pressing her forward to just _do_ something. A tiny voice at the back of her mind warned her about gods playing tricks, but Annabeth shushed it. Divine or not, whatever it was felt right, felt natural, felt that maybe for once in her life the Fates weren’t going to fray and pick at her string but instead weave it into what it needed to be.

With a burst of confidence she couldn’t source, she heaved herself away from the table and into the living room. Her cellphone sat quiet and dim on the coffee table. She plopped herself down on the edge of the sofa cushion and stared at it for a few moments. When she finally picked up her phone, she scooted herself back onto the couch and crisscrossed her legs in front of her. She tried not to think about what she was doing and let the movements come naturally. If she put even a hint of thought into it, she knew the logical part of her brain would talk her out of it. _Stop thinking about it. Just feel._

The phone was ringing on the other end. In those few seconds, doubt flooded her mind. _She shouldn’t do this, this was a bad idea, she shouldn’t--_ Then she heard the phone pick up.

A beat, then, “Piper?”

The relief she could hear in the answering sigh was almost palpable, even with the distance between them, _“Annabeth.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @acejasongrace!


End file.
